large a part of the Hundred Years' War. He was taken prisoner
near Rheims and ransomed in the following year; the King
himself contributed towards his ransom. Well-trained and
intelligent pages did not grow on every bush.

It is not known for certain when Chaucer began to write
poetry, but it is reasonable to believe that it was on his return
from France. The elegance of French poetry and its thrilling
doctrines of Amour Courtois ^* seem to have gone to his im-
pressionable, amorous, and poetical heart. He set to work to
translate the gospel of that kind of love and poetry, the Roman
de la Rose, a thirteenth-century French poem begun by
Guillaume de Lorris and later completed by Jean de Meun.

Meanwhile he was promoted as a courtier. In 1367 he was
attending on the King himself and was referred to as Dilectus
Valettus noster. . . our dearly beloved Valet. It was towards
that year that Chaucer married. His bride was Philippa de
Roet, a lady in attendance on the Queen, and sister to
Catherin Swynford, third wife of John of Gaunt.

Chaucer wrote no poems to her; it was not in fashion to
write poems to one's wife. It could even be debated whether
love could ever have a place in marriage; the typical situation
in which a 'courtly lover' found himself was to be plunged
in a secret, an illicit, and even an adulterous passion for some
seemingly unattainable and pedestalized lady. Before his
mistress a lover was prostrate, wounded to death by her
beauty, killed by her disdain, obliged to an illimitable con-
stancy, marked out for her dangerous service. A smile from
her was in theory a gracious reward for twenty years of pain-
ful adoration. All Chaucer's heroes regard love when it comes
upon them as the most beautiful of absolute disasters, an
agony as much desired as bemoaned, ever to be pursued,
never to be betrayed.

This was not in theory the attitude of a husband to his wife.
It was for a husband to command, for a wife to obey. The
changes that can be rung on these antitheses are to be seen
throughout The Canterbury Tales. If we may judge by the

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